This morning, I loaded up www.allmusic.com (a veritable Bible for music obsessives) and was greeted by an amusing — or perhaps horrifying — entry in the site’s new release roundup. The offending album is no other than Bob Dylan’s latest offering, a collection of — wait for it — Christmas carols entitled “Christmas in the Heart,” which hit stores Tuesday.
As I write this, I’m listening to the album on YouTube, and I literally cannot stop laughing. Right now, in my headphones, Dylan is croaking “Do You Hear What I Hear” in a voice that sounds something like a cross between Tom Waits being strangled and a dying cat. What makes it even better is the polished production, surely fussed over in some expensive studio for days, and the occasional flourishes of angelic backing vocals competing with Mr. Zimmerman’s croaking.
OK, before I go any further, I should mention that all proceeds from this album are going to Feeding America, or internationally, to The World Food Programme and Crisis UK. That’s noble, and in keeping with Dylan’s past work and the ideals he’s stood up for since his beginnings. I should also mention that I’m a huge fan of Dylan’s work — from the 1960s and ’70s.
So believe me, I don’t take pleasure in ripping this album to shreds, but someone has to. Dylan was never what you could call an interpreter of other people’s songs. He was, first and foremost, a brilliant lyricist. I remember my poetry professor in college telling my class that rock ’n’ roll lyrics generally do not make for good poetry, excluding Bob Dylan’s lyrics, and I would tend to agree with that for the most part. Just listen to “Mr. Tambourine Man.” Or “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.” Or “Like a Rolling Stone.” Or (insert Dylan song of your choice here).
No one is going to call Dylan an amazing vocalist — he’s not. And his voice has only gotten worse over the years, as this unintentionally funny Christmas album shows.
At this point, Dylan can do whatever he wants and it’s not going to hurt his legacy one bit. Heck, he could do whatever he wanted to in the ’60s and not hurt his legacy one bit — by the release of “Highway 61 Revisited” in 1965, his place in the rock ’n’ roll pantheon was assured. And he has done just that. No one is going to tell Dylan “No.” I mean, would you? I wouldn’t.
I’m not really bothered by the fact that Dylan has released this album — like I said, he’s Bob Dylan and he does what he wants, and it’s good for a laugh (try out his version of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”).
What bugs me to no end is the feverishly glowing reviews I’ve been reading of this album. Here’s one. Here’s another. Here’s one more.
Are my colleagues so blinded by Dylan’s former brilliance (yes, former — I thought this year’s “Together Through Life” was pretty atrocious, as well) that they can honestly sit with a straight face and write about how he gives these carols a “sense of menace,” or how the album is a “true Christmas miracle?” Oh, brother. Give me a break.
It’s obviously not just Dylan who constantly gets a free pass from rock journalists. This year, we’ve seen U2, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young and Green Day all release middling albums that are, at best, facsimiles of those artists’ glory days. And for the most part, the mainstream music press has bubbled over with a sickening display of unwarranted, unabashed praise for each of these train wrecks.
Are you a fan of any of these artists I just mentioned? So am I. I used to listen to Springsteen’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad” as a kid, mesmerized by his voice and his words. Green Day was my initial foray into “punk rock.” U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” is just amazing. And I remember buying my mom a copy of Neil Young’s “Harvest” for her birthday one year when I was in high school, only to end up listening to it more than she did.
But come on. “Get on Your Boots?” Really, Bono? Really? I can just picture the conversation in the studio:
Bono: “Oh no, we forgot the rocker! We need a rocker!”
The Edge: “Wait, let me see, I’ll just hit my fuzz pedal and play some pentatonic scales ... there! Now Bono, just sing the first bit of nonsense that comes to your mind.”
Bono: (looking down at his shoes) “I got it!”
Ladies and gentleman, U2’s latest half-baked hit.
Perhaps the most egregious band to get away with musical murder in recent years has to be Weezer. It seems as if the music press, still feeling guilty for trashing the quite excellent “Pinkerton” upon its initial release in 1996, are making up for it by gushing about anything Rivers Cuomo can pump out. At this point, Weezer’s mediocre (2001’s “Weezer” and 2002’s “Maladroit”) and bad (2005’s laughable “Make Believe” and 2008’s egocentric mess of a third self-titled album) outweigh its good output.
This sense of reverence towards certain artists is a problem that’s been plaguing music journalism for many years. Perhaps I’m being base and simplistic by saying this, but the job of any critic of the arts — be it film, music, theater, whatever — is to answer the question: “Is this any good?” But if you can’t see past the truly great things an artist has done in the past and judge a new work on its own merits, how can you answer this question?
Granted, this is all subjective. A critic is by no means an expert on anything, and in my opinion should never be listened to. I’m negating my own job here, but it’s what I believe. All a critic can (and should) hope to do is add to a running dialogue. My favorite thing about art is that there are as many different ways to experience it as there are people on this earth.
And with that said, I await the slaughter.
